Governor-elect wants to repeal license bill / Proposal may lead to confrontation with Legislature

Edward Epstein, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, October 9, 2003

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Governor-elect wants to repeal license bill / Proposal may lead to confrontation with Legislature

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Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday he would quickly press to repeal the new law allowing illegal immigrants to obtain California driver's licenses, a position likely to set up a major confrontation with the Democratic Legislature.

Schwarzenegger, appearing Wednesday at a Los Angeles news conference on his first day as governor-elect, said "I want to repeal" the driver's license law that Gov. Gray Davis signed last month after opposing earlier versions of the legislation.

Critics said Davis had signed the controversial bill to curry favor with Latino voters in his effort to fight the recall election. Still, it's estimated that 30 percent of Latino voters supported Schwarzenegger on Tuesday,

even though his main opponent for governor was Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the state's highest-ranking elected Latino official.

Schwarzenegger said the driver's license bill, which critics say will reward undocumented workers by providing them with official state identification, was a "bogus issue."

But Latino leaders vowed to fight any attempt to repeal the new law they worked for years to get enacted.

"My advice to Arnold Schwarzenegger is to work with the Legislature to make the law better," said Antonio Gonzalez, head of the William S. Velasquez Institute, a Los Angeles-based Latino think tank. Earlier versions of the law contained provisions for background checks on those applying for licenses to weed out criminals and potential terrorists, but in the law Davis signed much of that language was dropped.

"He can find middle ground with the Democrats in the very Latino-influenced state Legislature," added Gonzalez. He also urged Schwarzenegger, himself an immigrant from Austria, to avoid confrontation over immigration issues.

"If he wants to divide the state, he can continue to demagogue the issue," he added.

Support for repeal came from Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that generally favors a crackdown on immigration. Mehlman said an exit poll conducted for his group on Tuesday showed overwhelming voter support for repeal.

"I suspect the Legislature will ignore public opinion on this," he said. "This is another case where we will have to go over their heads." Plans are already in the works for a voter referendum, possibly in the March presidential primary, to undo Davis' action, he said.

Schwarzenegger has also said he supports federal legislation proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and other Republican members of Arizona's congressional delegation to create a guest workers visa program and a plan that would allow the 6 million to 10 million illegal immigrants working in the United States to participate in the guest worker program and apply for permanent status.

"I want to push in the direction to help undocumented workers . . . making undocumented workers documented and legal," Schwarzenegger said at Wednesday's press conference.

Gonzalez said the governor-elect's position on McCain's bill contradicted his stand on the driver's license law.

"McCain's proposal wants to bring the rule of law to immigration, as does the license law," he said.

Mehlman attacked the McCain proposal for doing the bidding of employers trying to drive down Americans' wages. "There's no evidence there's a shortage of labor in California or across the country," he said. "It should not be our objective to find out how cheaply we can get people to work here" by exploiting undocumented workers and pitting them against citizens and legal immigrants, he added.

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